


Set the World on Fire

by glorious_spoon



Series: A Story Never Told [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Angst and Porn, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Fuck Or Die, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, fuck or the people you love will die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 09:14:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18937933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: “It’s okay,” Alec murmurs in his ear. His hands curl tighter, fingers pressing into muscle almost hard enough to hurt, and Jace realizes that he’s shaking. Might be crying. He can’t even tell. Alec sounds completely steady, and if Jace couldn’t feel him through the bond he might even buy it. “Jace, it’s okay.”





	Set the World on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of wish there was a way to differentiate the kind of fuck-or-die fic where everybody secretly really wants to fuck and the kind where they definitely do _not_ but are forced to do so anyway. This is the second kind of fic, so please read with that in mind.
> 
> Also, I didn't tag this as infidelity because what happens in this fic is rape and I don't consider that infidelity, but just in case it bears mentioning: Jace and Alec are both involved with and in love with other people here, and neither of them wants to be doing this.
> 
> ETA: If you just want to comment to call me names and tell me to delete, that's... your prerogative, I guess? But I'm not going to, and honestly your time might be better spent reading fic you actually enjoy. The tags and warnings are there for a reason; use them.

Alec doesn’t stop talking the whole time. His voice, the rough, familiar cadence of it in Jace’s ear, is ironically the only thing holding him together. His hands on Jace’s skin. It’s dark in here at least, dark enough that there’s no light filtering through his closed eyelids, and if he doesn’t let himself think about it, he can almost disconnect those two things. Alec’s soothing voice in his ear and the warm body beneath him. The sensation of it, friction and heat. It’s different from fucking a woman, but it’s not _that_ different. 

(It’s a hell of a lot different for _Alec_ , of course, but that’s why they’re doing it this way. He’s done it before.

 _I’m not going to risk hurting you on top of everything else,_ he said flatly, earlier, stripping out of his clothes with a calm kind of efficiency, like they were just in the changing room after a sparring session and not about to play a starring role in some twisted psycho’s sex magic spell with half the people they love held hostage as collateral. _And trust me, that’s what’s going to happen if the first time you ever try it is—_

 _How do you know I’ve never tried it?_ Jace asked. His hands were unbuttoning his own shirt, too. Peeling off his undershirt, untying his boots. The same calm efficiency as Alec, except that his fingers were shaking. His voice was trying to find a joking cadence, but it just came out fractured, thin and cracked. Disbelieving, still, even at the point of it. Even with Alec kicking out of his boots and shoving his jeans and boxers off. He’d seen Alec naked before, plenty of times. There was nothing new about his body, other than the context. _You know pegging is a thing, right?_

Alec fixed him with the same penetrating stare that he used on evasive shadowhunters in the Institute, and said, _Have you?_

 _No,_ Jace admitted. _But I could have. Theoretically._

Alec let out a startled-sounding bark of laughter, and for a moment it was okay, everything was okay between them. Just for a moment. The last moment, Jace will think later.)

Alec’s hands on his hips, firm and grounding like he’s bracing a broken bone, the drag of his half-hard cock against Jace’s stomach. Disconnect the two. Focus on Alec’s voice. Don’t think about how Alec knows how to do this so smoothly, about the fact that no one other than Magnus has ever touched him like this and for Alec that _means_ something. 

Don’t think about Clary. Don’t think about all of the things that are breaking right now.

“It’s okay,” Alec murmurs in his ear. His hands curl tighter, fingers pressing into muscle almost hard enough to hurt, and Jace realizes that he’s shaking. Might be crying. He can’t even tell. Alec sounds completely steady, and if Jace couldn’t feel him through the bond he might even buy it. “Jace, it’s okay.”

Alec sounds steady, but all Jace can feel from him is a nauseating churn of shame and grief. Arousal, too, and that might actually be the worst of it. Is probably the worst part of it, for Alec.

 _It’s okay._ He wants to say it back. Wants to tell Alec that it’s okay, it’s _okay_ , that he knows Alec doesn’t want this, even--before, back before Magnus, back when he could still feel that sparking, fizzy, giddy thing that neither of them named through the bond when he touched Alec or smiled at him or stood too close, that even then Alec never wanted _this._ _It’s okay. This isn’t your fault._

He can’t. The words stick in his throat and the slide of Alec’s body against him and beneath him is too much, too intimate, cracking something between them and he can’t pretend this is anything other that what it is. He’s never been that good at compartmentalizing. Alec’s breath is heavy against his cheek and his hips are rolling up to meet Jace’s, the roughness of his chest hair and the breadth of his body and his cock, fully hard now and slipping wetly between them, and it’s too much, he can’t, he _can’t—_

“Hey,” Alec says again, and he sounds unsteady now, just a little. A shiver in his voice, and an unhelpful part of Jace’s brain observes, _This is what he sounds like when he’s about to come._

It’s not just Alec. He can feel his own orgasm building in the shiver of his thighs, the heat pooling at the base of his spine.

_It’s not us, it’s the spell. It’s not us. It’s not—_

It _feels_ like them, though. It’s his body that’s fucking Alec, it’s Alec’s leg hooked over his thigh, Alec’s cock leaking precome against his stomach, Alec’s hand lifting from his hip to cup the back of his head, and for a terrifying instant Jace thinks he’s going to kiss him or something. 

He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. He draws Jace down until his head is resting against Alec’s shoulder, Alec’s skin beneath his cheek, the speeding drumbeat of his heart, and it’s only then that Jace realizes his arms are trembling so hard where they’re braced against the pallet that he was about to collapse.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, and Alec’s fingers card through his hair like when they were kids and Jace was waking up from another nightmare.

“It’s okay,” Alec says into his hair, and that’s the biggest lie he’s ever told Jace, _ever_ , but Jace doesn’t have time to think about it because Alec twists beneath him, shifting slightly to change the angle, and he’s _there_ suddenly, orgasm hitting like a painless punch to the gut and turning the entire world to burning light. Alec swears raggedly and reaches down between them to jerk himself off roughly, and wet heat pulses between them and it’s—

Over. It’s over. It’s done. The air around them is pulsing and heavy with power. It’s their bond, of course. The subversion of the parabatai bond like this is some of the most potent dark magic you can generate. It’s why she wanted the two of them in the first place.

The magic seems to press in on them, weightless but smothering, and then it’s gone all in an instant and it’s just Jace and Alec, alone in an empty room, naked and tangled up together, sweat and come cooling on their skin.

Jace yanks himself away so hard that he almost falls off the cot. His eyes are shut so tightly that there are spots of color blooming behind his lids, and behind him, he can hear Alec shifting as well, moving away. Pushing himself off the cot to stand. Through their bond, there’s a spasm of something so awful that Jace doesn’t even have words for it, and then it clamps off like Alec yanked a garrote around it.

Jace sways, disoriented by the sudden emptiness in his head and heart. The coldness of it. He can hear Alec moving around the room, the shift of fabric as he cleans himself off and pulls his clothes on, but it’s not until his own clothes land in a soft pile in his lap that he manages to make himself open his eyes. After the dark insides of his eyelids, the dim room seems full of light. Alec is standing in front of him, dressed in jeans and t-shirt, boots on his feet but unlaced. His face is the kind of blank that Jace hasn’t seen from him in years.

“Alec,” he starts, cracking and soft. He doesn’t know what to say after that, though. And that’s new. Even when they were fighting and furious, he’s never run out of words with Alec. Not like this.

Alec’s face twists, so briefly that he could almost imagine that he didn’t see it at all, then settles back into that blank mask. 

“Get dressed,” he says. “We need to go get the others out before she changes her mind.”

A concrete task. That, Jace can do. Alec turns his back as he pulls his clothes back on, a job that takes twice as long as it should with how hard his hands are shaking. There’s a door in the wall that wasn’t there before, and when he finally shoves his feet into his boots and stands, it swings open silently to show the dark corridor beyond.

Alec doesn’t look at him again, and he keeps a measured yard of space between them as they step through the door and leave that little room behind.


End file.
